BUG - Lever won't open to Cave for God Reincarnation Quest

February 25th, 2014, 03:35

Was this problem ever resolved? It sounds like the lever needs to be locked - i.e. you can't pull it - until the player is on the 'Gods Reincarnation Cult' quest. This would require editing the level I guess, is that possible now?

I'm in the mood for some modding - I never did finish my dialogs overhaul for White Gold, and this sounds like a good thing to fix too.

Originally Posted by myers90
I'll check this one too, just need some time

Sorry, I haven't been keeping up with news around here much but what have you achieved over there mysers90? Do you have the level editor working?

I was having a look at the version of the SDK we have last night and as we know it's an old version that came with the leaked copy of The Precursors, circa 2008. From what I can tell it's basically just the Vital Engine 2.0 SDK (Boiling Point era), so how did you get it to work with the Vital Engine 3.0 levels?

No, its the new one, if you look closer it has a lot of new functions (mostly working). I had a problem before - I wasn't able to generate AI map for new levels - but I figured out how to do that. Just have to set "releaseversion=0" in the enginesettings.ini, then the engine do it automaticly when you first run the new level. The other thing was the mapplanner, the open function is broken (my only idea: maybe needs a correct firebird server?), but I made an alternative program, what I'm still working on it. So now we have an almost complete SDK, just the new 3DS Max exporters are missing… but I "studied" the new rf2 structures, so I can make a working car from an older version of rf2 models with hex editor (I will write a program for that too). For the other models, like NPCs or static things you can use the old exporter without any change.

If someone can make this work, I will of course add the fix to the next unofficial patch! Another issue might be worth fixing, on the CIA boat there is no way back once you miss the exit key. Maybe this can be changed somehow too by editing the boat map itself…

I need a help to do this fix. Can you check what is the .lv2 file of that part of the island what contains this lever? You have to set the DRAWGRAPH to 2 in the enginesettings.ini (or if your console is enabled, just type DRAWGRAPH 2) and go to the lever. Thanks!

But whats the problem with the leaked SDK? Its complete, and working. The only thing is we should ask from them is the new 3ds max plugins… to make the work easier, not a life and death issue it can be solved with the old plugins, and hex editing.

I was under the impression that it wasn't complete and working, you're doing good work over there my friend! Do you think you'd be able to document and repackage the SDK to include any additions you've made?

I was wondering the other day who it was that discovered the English text in the resource files, and I think it was you wasn't it mysers90? If you hadn't found that, then I wouldn't have hacked the translation out or developed the group file unpacker. It was an important discovery!

I'll try to make some documentation, write down all of my knowledges and experiences with the SDK. But there is a problem with a full working SDK, if we want to run it with the game and in developer mode, we need to decrypt all of the textures, and its a very long and boring work. Of course it can be circumvented, I'll try to find a good solution for it.

Originally Posted by badmofo
Wesp, do you still have the relevant save file to get us to the lever?

I don't really know, I will take a look at my saved games this evening.

But while I love to see this forum coming alive again , I don't understand why you and myers90 want to work on White Gold and Boiling Point! As cool as these games are, they are buggy but complete and we even got Far Cry 2 and Far Cry 3 which are similar…

On the other hand, The Precursors is quite unique in its scope and it also ends before coming to a conclusion . In my opinion it would be a much worthier effort to create a suitable ending for it! I'm pretty sure the player was supposed to go to the conference on Limpid in the Zirit system to get info on how to stop the pyramids exploding which then would be made to work on Negletik in the Borator system. Both planet maps are already hidden in the game files, it would be so great if we could finish this game!

Badmofo, could you ask the developer you reached if he can tell us something about how the game would have continued? Maybe they are not allowed to give out the SDK, but when I restored the cut library map for V:TM Bloodlines, Brian Mitsoda gave me all the information he could still remember about what was supposed to happen there…

Originally Posted by myers90
But there is a problem with a full working SDK, if we want to run it with the game and in developer mode, we need to decrypt all of the textures, and its a very long and boring work. Of course it can be circumvented, I'll try to find a good solution for it.

What do you mean by decrypt them? You mean convert the .rf2's into actual images?

Originally Posted by Wesp5
I don't understand why you and myers90 want to work on White Gold and Boiling Point!

What can I say? I have a thing for the tropics! To be honest I haven't really even played Precursors much, only for some mods and dialog improvements. It does look like a cool game though, I'll get to it one day.

Originally Posted by Wesp5
Badmofo, could you ask the developer you reached if he can tell us something about how the game would have continued?

I'll try, but this guy is less than talkative. My one and only reply from him was pretty much just a cut-and-paste response that others have received from him.

I mean the way what you already made a topic about. Open the compressed textures throught materials (you mixed up rf2 with .dt1 and 2 files - rf2 is the model) in the RF2View or the LevelEdit, take a screen capture, then do it to tga textures in gimp or photoshop. Its not a hard work, but long and boring with thousands of textures (and with alpha channels, and any modifiers). By the way who is the DS guy?

Wesp5: I like Precursors too (although I didn't played really that game), but I still really love Boiling Point, and my first dream was to remake a better version of that, if we will have an useable SDK.

Originally Posted by myers90
I mean the way what you already made a topic about. Open the compressed textures throught materials (you mixed up rf2 with .dt1 and 2 files - rf2 is the model) in the RF2View or the LevelEdit, take a screen capture, then do it to tga textures in gimp or photoshop. Its not a hard work, but long and boring with thousands of textures (and with alpha channels, and any modifiers). By the way who is the DS guy?

Oh yeah that's right, getting the textures out was painful and I had trouble with transparency - I started a HUD replacement mod but couldn't get it to look right thanks to the transparency issue. I think I tried to hack together something to automate the conversion but not sure where I got to with that.

The DS guy that replied - I tried both of the original directors - was Roman Lut "HAX". I've since sent him another email and he hasn't responded

This is all he responded with the first time:

You have to understand that SDK release and support has purely commercial purposes to prolong game life and/or advertise engine.
Xenus/Xenus2/Precursors are owned by Russobit-M. company which is no longer interested in supporting it.
Deep Shadows does not receive revenues for Xenus sales if any.
Deep Shadows has no plans to use Vital Engine ZL in next games. It's current target are small Hidden Object games.
So there will be no SDK releases and support

Both of lever and CIA boat problems are fixed! Although I've already sent you a lever fix, I found a better way, and I also fixed some other problems on the CIA boat map. There was a problem with box barricades: There are some boxes splitting up the boat to two parts, but these boxes was breakable… but there is also a hidden wall, so if you broke the boxes it could look bad when you ran to the hidden wall, so the boxes are now unbreakable And there was some visible enemy spawn what I've fixed.